User equipment (UE) used within wireless communication networks may include a number of various communication states that may be employed to save power and/or network resources. For example, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) long-term evolution (LTE) Release 10 (March 2011), which may also be referred to as LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), provides two states for radio resource control (RRC) circuitry, i.e., RRC_idle and RRC_connected. In general, a UE may be instructed by a base station to release its connection, e.g., transition from RRC_connected to RRC_idle, in the event no communications occur for a predetermined period of time. The predetermined period of time may be set by an idle inactivity timer. When communications are to be commenced, the UE may reacquire its connection, e.g., transition from RRC_idle to RRC_connected, in order to commence with the communication.
Currently, several different types of Internet applications running on UEs send short messages that cause frequent state transitions by the UE. This may result in a large signaling overhead, both over the air as well as the core network, due to authentication, key exchange, IP address assignments, etc., that may be required for the UE to reacquire its connection.